Bank of China Joins Blockchain Platform for Property Buyers

Property development firm New World Development and the Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute (ASTRI) will launch a blockchain platform for home buyers with the Bank of China.

The platform has the aim of replacing paperwork operations such as signing the Provisional Sale and Purchase Agreement or a mortgage application with digital authorization. This will supposedly allow users to send the purchaser’s authorized, encrypted and digitally signed provisional agreement to selected banks.

Integration of distributed ledger technology (DLT) into organizations’ internal processes is estimated to help reduce banks’ operating costs by 15 to 60 percent, while the platform itself expects to see an increase in the number of users.

Hugh Chow, ASTRI CEO reportedly said that DLT could reshape property market operations, resulting in efficient and flexible property buying procedures, while the HKMA argued that DLT “allows all users in the ecosystem to share customer information and transaction histories securely over a distributed data infrastructure, without compromising customer privacy or sensitive business information.”

China has been actively adopting blockchain technology in various sectors. Recently, the country’s government issued the “Guiding Opinions on Rural Service Revitalization of Financial Services.”